Pregnancy & Fertility

This work was inspired by the history of women working under feudalism in medieval time. I created a quilt, which symbolizes pregnancy and fertility. In this piece, I reversed the texture of a quilt from soft and plushy to hard and solid, representing a woman’s strength. The opening the grapes create when peeking through the hay in the center represents a woman’s vagina. The grapes themselves are a symbol of fertility. There are twelve circular patches for each month of the year. Within nine of the patches are images of bluegrass seeds germinating and maturing into grasses. The growth of the grass in the first nine patches represents a woman’s 9 months of pregnancy and is followed by three blank patches to represent a women’s empty womb after giving birth and completing the year. The circular shape of the quilt epitomizes the general history of women’s inability to advance due to social and political obstacles.